What Is Going To Happen To High-Stakes Fantasy Football?

FFBL23 · Post by **FFBL23** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 6:57 pm

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
Kevin, it's not fair of me to put RT in this position and I apologize to them for that. But I also think it's unfair of that contest to promote a possible live event without a back-end service in place right now to run it. It's misleading to the customers and there are not many other options in our industry for third-party providers.

Nobody could back out if no signed contract was finalized. It's possible a deal was dependent on 2010 prizes being paid, which would make sense to anyone allowing any contest to take new signups. Makes sense. If all prizes can be paid in full, that would likely change everything. Okay, gotcha. Greg, given your experience how quickly can a game operator get a back end stat service in place?

KenGill · Post by **KenGill** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 10:53 pm

FF Maestro.....hits the nail on the head. I'll repeat what I've said before. The WCOFF is in it's final stages just like Enron was a decade ago. No cash to meet their obligations. The people running WCOFF should be forced into bankruptcy and / or sued for whatever money can be recovered to pay the people who are owed money. Then criminal charges should be filed. This is stealing, plain and simple. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 11:58 pm

Originally posted by FFBL23:
quote:Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:
Kevin, it's not fair of me to put RT in this position and I apologize to them for that. But I also think it's unfair of that contest to promote a possible live event without a back-end service in place right now to run it. It's misleading to the customers and there are not many other options in our industry for third-party providers.

Nobody could back out if no signed contract was finalized. It's possible a deal was dependent on 2010 prizes being paid, which would make sense to anyone allowing any contest to take new signups. Makes sense. If all prizes can be paid in full, that would likely change everything. Okay, gotcha. Greg, given your experience how quickly can a game operator get a back end stat service in place? [/QUOTE]Kevin, the only option at this point would be to return to the company that already has this done for your game. Nobody could turn around and develop the software that is needed for custom games like this in the next few weeks. So again, in my opinion only, the only option available is to pay all of the customers in full TODAY, prove to RT that 2010 has been rectified so that 2011 payments can come in, and move forward with a proven, effective software for that game. That scenario works for everyone, but of course it starts with paying all of the players in full, which any good industry company would do.

But that's just my opinion. I shouldn't even be venturing into this area, but I'm sad to see people wondering if the venues still have space for this draft when in fact the game operators should be up front and honest about not having the technology to run this game, at this point. Because as we all know, that's a big part of our game operations. That isn't there as we speak and RT Sports has stated so publicly to past customers and others. Sorry for the bad news, but facts are facts, even ones we don't want to hear.

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 4:09 pm

What I don't get is that they had at least a 6 month window from the start of football in September 2010 to close to March 2011 where: (1) they knew they did not have enough money to pay the football winners, (2) they had a good customer base, (3) at that time, they still had some loyalty and good will amongst their customers, and (4) yet, the public did not know that they did not have enough money to pay their football winners.

At this point, they were still a valuable commodity. They had a 6 month window to quietly sell the company to a new owner would would have retained the same customers and good will, and could have quietly loaned the company the money to pay off the football owners without them knowing that there was even a problem to begin with. If they almost sold the business to someone last week with all this mess, it could have been done last winter!

Maybe a line of credit was revoked at the 11th hour. Maybe the Fanball announcement last January raised some false hope that they would be able to pull this out of the fire by taking over the NFBC and NFFC business. Nevertheless, I just don't get it. What on earth were Dustin / other owners in the know doing in this 6 month window?

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:17 pm

Good post above Trust In Bill. I think you are spot on. There was much that could have been done between January and Aug. 16th that wasn't done to protect the players or secure the players' prize money. Not running the WCOFB when signups were so low and you knew that losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars were going to occur again for the second straight year would have been one good decision. Going forward with that event without reducing the prize money was not a good decision. Now the problem has been compounded two-fold and more players are hurt.

Admitting truthfully the financial situation in March to players while openly looking for new investors would have been the next best step. The miscommunication and 100+ days of no updates turned the WCOFF from valuable to (fill in the blank). All trust was lost from the players. Most of the value of the asset was jeopardized. And the turnaround to right the ship in time to make this profitable in 2011 was seriously hampered. I know there were many attempts to find new investors and get the prizes paid, but having multiple owners didn't help and at the end of the day someone needed to cover a big $ total of prizes (baseball, plus some football) for a sale to go through. I'm not sure anyone would have covered the entire prize total in an Asset Acquisition even with more time to review the books, but we'll never know now.

Unfortunately, even now the lack of honesty and transparency and lack of communication hurts everyone involved. Dustin hasn't updated the situation since Monday night when he announced draft picks. There are folks on those boards who honestly think a live draft can still go off and some people believe they will have rooms at the MGM that he promised them. You have hundreds of folks with draft picks in hand, plane tickets purchased and hotel rooms hopefully set aside for them with no confirmation of anything from him since Monday night. He has yet to admit that his past stats provider will not run the game in 2011 and only a statement from them will convince his loyal customers of that. Dustin needs to update everyone now about the situation so that they can move on with their lives and plan accordingly.

I talked to many of these folks yesterday, including some who are owed tens of thousands of dollars and even more than that. They are beyond upset, but many of them still don't believe this is totally done and are giving Dustin time to find a solution. I'm not sure I've ever seen a more loyal group and for that I'm proud and sad at the same time. He had one of the best customer bases in the industry and has not reciprocated over these last 200+ days. He fails to honestly update the situation, allow them to move on and continues to give false hope. It's a shame and it's time for everyone to move on, and I'm saying that as someone who has been in this industry for 22 years and cares about the players, not as a competitive game operator. Folks, he can't help you play this year and he can't get you fully paid this year. It's unfortunate, but there is no white knight coming today, tomorrow or Monday.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:29 pm

I don't normally grab posts from other message boards, but this one posted last night from Loonzilla on the WCOFF boards is what I'm talking about. You have folks who are still holding out hope and yet for days now no response from management. It's frustrating. Here's Loonzilla's post:

"This is all so crazy it's hard to believe. So many people have plane tickets and "hopefully" a hotel to stay for what used to be the most exciting weekend in September. Non-deletion of posts worry me, for that states Dustin has checked out. At least he was on the boards during his post deleting.

I'm kissing my 8G winnings away since I believe I will get none of it, but at least I didn't spend REAL money on plane tickets to Vegas or use up valuable vacation. I feel really bad for the big time winners; hopefully you guys got a portion of the loot up front or didn't spend to much thinking this cash was on its way. I know if it was me, I might have bought a new car (at minimum) thinking cash was coming my way. Hopefully you're more conservative than I would have been.

Dustin, fricken at least address the masses. Damn, it may be the worse time of your life, but man up and say something."

Again, there was false hope given on Monday night when he knew he had lost the back-end provider who could run his contests and still announced the draft picks. 180+ people were given draft slots and hope that an event will be hosted. Many more were shown a proposal that included cash payments to those owed $2,000 or less once a "transaction" was completed. Hope was given of more news to come. By Tuesday morning, nothing more was told and as of today no new info is being presented. I know for a fact owners are afraid to officially sign up for any other contest now because they don't want to jeopardize getting paid the $2,000 in case something doesn't happen this week. Some still believe the live event can happen and the hotel rooms will be there for them. It's unlikely, but only one person can officially tell folks that. And instead of honestly clearing all of this up, the pain gets compounded more and lasts longer through this silence. It's unbelievable and frustrating. I know you can tell I'm frustrated, but I've talked to many of these folks in the last two days -- many who I've never talked to in my life and who talked openly to me like we were brothers because they trust me with the facts and are in SERIOUS pain over the loss of this money -- and right now I'm ready to fight for them. It's time to at least let those who still want to come to Las Vegas and remain in the space go. Just be truthful and let this go. It's the very, very, very least you can do at this point and you know it.

It's hard for me to even read those boards anymore because every post is painful yet full of hope. Again, I wish I had those type of loyal customers. Where do you find those loyal customers?!!! But many of them have been in the trenches with the WCOFF for the last decade and want to fight to the finish. I admire you for that. Unfortunately, the captain has left the front line. It's time to retreat and live to see another day. I honestly believe that. Waiting for that official declaration of D-Day isn't coming from over there.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:36 pm

Ahhhhhhhh, thankfully the situation with WCOFF's back-end stats provider has been verified and clarified. Here is an open letter from Mark Hanna, President and CEO of RealTime Fantasy Sports, to the WCOFF players that is available from their customer service department. This has been posted today:

August 17, 2011
An Open Letter to WCOFF Fans and Players

To those members who have participated in the World Championship of Fantasy Football (WCOFF) and World Championship of Fantasy Baseball (WCOFB) high-stakes contests the past few seasons:

As you probably already know, RealTime Fantasy Sports Inc. has powered WCOFF for the past 4 football seasons (2007-2010) and WCOFB since its inception in 2010. As usual, we began negotiations on a new contract with GridIron Fantasy Sports (which owns WCOFF and WCOFB) to power WCOFF for 2011 promptly after the 2010 football season ended (RTSports is currently under contract to run WCOFB until the end of this baseball year.) While in the process of renegotiating the contract, we understood that GridIron was recapitalizing its business to address payout issues for the 2010 season. Because we have not learned that those issues were addressed, we have been unable to reach closure of the renegotiation of our contract with GridIron and those negotiations have been suspended. For that reason, we also suspended the online satellite sign-ups at that time. (We have no control over the Main Event or other sign-ups because those were conducted by GridIron, not us.)

Finally, on last Friday evening, August 12th, we received an e-mail from GridIron claiming that "the WCOFF restructuring had been completed and an announcement would be made on Monday." GridIron requested we re-open registration to their online satellite leagues, in their words, "so we can roll these leagues out to our diehards who we will be communicating to on the Message Boards prior to our formal announcement on Monday. We want to give our diehards a feeling of 'knowing before anyone else' as a way to thank them for their patience." We decided to re-open registration only on two very specific conditions: 1) They made a public announcement, as promised, to their customers on every possible message board explaining the company restructure and how their indebted customers will be compensated and 2) they delivered a fully-signed copy of the restructure agreement to us so that we can be sure the announcement was legitimate. Failure to do both by then end of the business day on Monday, August 15th would result in registration being closed for good and all negotiations regarding any future contracts between RealTime Fantasy Sports, Inc. and GridIron would cease. Again, as I am sure you already know, no formal announcement was made and no fully-signed agreement was delivered to us. On Tuesday morning, August 16th, we formally notified GridIron that we would no longer pursue any contracts with them.

Let me make a few important points:

We have had a great relationship with the GridIron folks. I consider Dustin, Jesse and Jill to be very good people. Trust me when I state that our decision to end our relationship with GridIron was not an easy one. It is my sincerest hope that GridIron can right their ship and continue running a successful business in the future.

We have no other relationship with GridIron except that we power their games. There is no partnership, we are not owned in any way by them (nor are they owned by us), there are no shares of stock involved, etc. Although our offices are both located in the same city, there is no commonality of our businesses whatsoever. RealTime Fantasy Sports, Inc. has no connection with the operation of the games.

We do not know the details behind the negotiations between GridIron and their perspective buyers. In fact, I am certain there are others in this industry that know more than we do. Maybe they were, indeed, very close to a deal several times. Maybe not. If you have any questions you will have to direct them to the GridIron folks, not us.

Above everything else, we value our relationship with the customer the most.

To our customers: We do not run any contests with the payouts as large as WCOFF or the other high-stakes companies, but be assured that all our prize money is immediately kept aside and not touched. In the future we will consider using an escrow account of some kind as additional reassurance to our pay-to-play customers. I strongly suggest all other companies with pay-to-play contests do the same.

Finally, let me make one more important point: If you are someone who is happy to be witnessing these developments with WCOFF and WCOFB because you believe it will somehow help you in the long run, then you are not seeing the big picture. Everyone is hurt by these developments, as well as what happened with RapidDraft, SportsBuff, AFFL and other pay-to-play sites that have gone out of business. Of course the people who will never get paid are damaged, but so are other legitimate companies who run pay-to-play games as they will come under much more scrutiny. Those customers who like to partake in high-stakes contests will become more hesitant to sign up for those games. Fantasy software companies (like ours) will become more hesitant to power high-stake games, not because they are afraid of legal action, but because they do not want the stigma of being associated with companies that do not pay their winners as promised. There are no winners.

Lastly, a little perspective is in order. We can understand the frustration anyone would have if they were not paid their prize money as promised, but before you wish too much ill will on Dustin, you should know that he has been diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma and is currently undergoing extensive treatment to fight the disease. Please keep him in your prayers.

Thanks,

Mark Hanna
President and CEO
RealTime Fantasy Sports Inc.

Tom Kessenich · Post by **Tom Kessenich** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 4:37 am

I just got off the phone with a WCOFF player who has three teams rolled over there and really wants to take two Primetime teams with us. But he's not sure what the status is with his rollover teams. He also has played with two friends and one of them is so upset about the WCOFF debacle he has refused to ever play high-stakes again.

This is the carnage we're left to sift through and it really really stinks.